Tag: ancient-rome

Elizabeth McNeil, Perseverance Place (Canelo Saga 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62979005-perseverance-place

1890 Edinburgh. When Brabazon Nairn’s husband Duncan is bankrupted, they and their two teenage sons, Henry and Laurence, must start over, taking up residence in Perseverance Place.
They sell the mansion house, and the creditors agree to let Brabazon take over the management of the brewery.
First to call upon the new neighbours is Nellie Warre, wife of head brewer Alex.
Brabazon’s first brew they christen ‘Mrs Nairn’s Number One’. Duncan is ill, and it’s serious, Parkinson’s. Someone is in the brewery, late at night, and she discovers Alex dead. Someone had pushed him down the ladder.
Mhairi in the Outer Hebrides is raped by Dugald Stewart, and she has a son, but her mother says either she or the bairn has to go. She goes to work in the kitchen of a convent but finds it hellish, so, she runs away.
Mhairi takes a room in the Place and soon endears herself to the Nairns, nursing Duncan in his final days while Brabazon runs the brewery. Her family have emigrated to New York, her baby Calum with them. The elder Nairn brother Henry is interested in her. But there is long-standing resentment and rivalry between Henry and his brother Laurence.
This Scottish family saga is a beautiful novel. We get to know all the tenants in the Place, and they feel very real. The writing is wonderful. There are beautiful phrases like ‘ships’ masts leaning confidingly together’ in the harbour and gorgeous words like ‘debouched’.
I got a bit exhausted reading about suffering and then more suffering. Then, when the family is prosperous again, it’s good news and then more good news. It could have continued forever, taking up the children, then the grandchildren.
If there is an overlying theme, I suppose it’s—perseverance—starting anew and keeping at it.
This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.

Mark Knowles, Argo (Head of Zeus 2022)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58327073-argo?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=kbFC4gIOE7&rank=3

1230 BCE Iolkos, Thessaly. A stranger arrives to compete in King Pelias’ Games, wearing only one sandal. The man, his nephew Jason, was supposed to have been killed as a child. Now, Jason wants the kingdom. Pelias sets him an impossible task—steal the Golden Fleece of Colchis.
The early chapters feature vignettes where we successively meet the Argonauts—all our favourites: Castor and Pollux, Orpheus, Herakles. With his mighty allies, Jason sets sail. A captain among established heroes, he has some teething troubles establishing his command. He needs not only to steal the Fleece, he also needs to become a leader.
The plot roughly follows Apollonius of Rhodes, minus the supernatural elements.
The crew are seduced by the man-less women of Lemnos, experience the mysteries of the old gods with the Kabeiroi (a cult associated with Hephaestus) on Samothrace, fight various Black Sea tribes, rescue Phineus from the Harpies (scavenging birds). The dragonteeth army is here substituted by Sirakian warriors.
One of the Argonauts, Herakles, is a hero of the Bronze Age, winning prowess by brute force. Jason is a new man (for 13th C BC), a hero for the Iron Age, a man of trade not conquest, who uses his brains not his brawn. As if to acknowledge that his day is done, Herakles is parted from the company, leaving the venture to the wiles of Jason.
For a tale which introduced the world to a new sort of hero, Jason doesn’t always occupy centre stage in Knowles’ version, and in the end it’s the wiles of the princess, Medea, that wins the Fleece.
This is a modern retelling of the ancient myth, but Knowles’ background in the Classics, archaeology and even antique shipcraft is evident.
The novel ends with a ‘to be continued’, so I assume we will read more of Jason and Medea.
This review was written for Historical Novels Review.

S. J. A. Turney, The Bear of Byzantium (Canelo Adventure 2022)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59832856-the-bear-of-byzantium?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=H7loc0B6jg&rank=1

Harðráði (Harald ‘Hardrada’ Sigurdsson), his second-in-command Valgarðr and the Varangian Guard, the Byzantine emperor’s personal guard, defeat the Bulgars at the Battle of Ostrovo. 6000 strong, the Varangians comprise men from the northern Baltic and Rus, their Viking warrior skills hardened by battle.
Halfdan, and his crew on the Sea Wolf, shadow Harðráði’s journey back to Constantinople, and the men eventually meet. Halfdan’s seer Gunnhild negotiates for the crew to join Harðráði’s Varangians, for which role they must feign allegiance to ‘the nailed god’ and swear an oath to the imperial throne.
Constantinople is a new world for these men, and they have to navigate the new pecking order. Gunnhild takes a house in the city, and soon people are coming to her for healing. Her fame grows, and she is called to service the Empress Zoe herself.
The emperor is ill, and Halfdan’s crew become embroiled in imperial intrigue. They find their oath of allegiance put to the test as a struggle for the throne ensues. Which thread in the weaving of the Norns is Gunnhild’s destiny?
Leaping straight into the personal drama between various commanders, this story is well written and full of fascinating characters with an exciting, complex plot. It’s a bit uncomfortable that there’s no clear protagonist; Harðráði is the eponymous ‘bear’, but the hero of the series is Halfdan, and Gunnhild seems to direct most of the action.
Attention to the detail of these 11th century mercenaries’ lives really makes the story come to life. The details of Gunnhild’s Seiðr (Nordic magic) practice are fascinating. The battle scenes are choreographed and gory.
All of the main characters here are taken from real history. Turney seems not just to know the period, but to understand it.
This is Book 2 in the Wolves of Odin Series.
This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.

Tony Bassett, The Crossbow Stalker (The Book Folks 2022)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60353844-the-crossbow-stalker?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=P9CIPdwp3J&rank=1

Young detective sergeant Sunita Roy is called to a murder at a remote country cottage. The victim, Oliver, has been shot with a crossbow bolt and a handkerchief embroidered with the letter C has been stuffed into his mouth. So begins Tony Bassett’s excellent crime thriller.

As the investigation progresses, so do the murders, all with crossbows and all with the handkerchief marked C. And there may be a copycat killer on the loose as well.

A near-perfect crime thriller. I’ve never solved a murder, myself, but the police methods seemed quite realistic. The large cast of characters and suspects all have inter-connecting stories. We get clues and pieces of evidence bit by bit, with tantalising red herrings, encouraging the reader to try to crack the crime. I usually don’t, but I did this time. The writing is excellent, and the characters are colourful.

Greg Parkes, Plumes of Dust (2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/96064279-plumes-of-dust?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=P6V8MoTd6S&rank=4

1745. James Schoolcraft is apprenticed to Jacob Wyngaart, master sawyer at Mr Schuyler’s mill in Saratoga. Beyond the trading post ten miles north upstream, there was ‘nothing but a wilderness of bears, wolves and Indians as far as Montreal’. His ambition, after completing his apprenticeship, is to return home to Schoharie and build a sawmill there. He has his eye on the Wyngaarts’ daughter Rachel.

An attack by French soldiers and Indians invades their peaceful breakfast, and the wife Greta is killed, Rachel abducted by the Indians and Mr Schuyler’s house and the sawmill torched. James and the rest of the Dutch villagers are taken captive by the French.

Rachel is taken by Tekanatoken to be his adopted daughter, before she leaves, pledging her love to James. She escapes from one master only to be enslaved by another. She talks to the ghosts of the women who went before her.

James and Jacob’s family are among those sent to Quebec, where James makes the acquaintance of Mrs Mercy Weaver, who, she admits, ‘lies with men’.

Rachel is called by different names according to which man is her master, which made me think she accepted her bondage. I wondered if her talking to ghosts was a sign of emotional deterioration. Were they ghosts? Were they jealous spirits from another realm determined to ruin her? Were they alternate personalities?

The Indian attack scene is a bit thrown away, without any suspense built, and thus, we don’t feel the outrage that we might do at Rachel’s abduction. Despite being based on the historical Raid on Saratoga during King George’s War and the characters in the story being based on real historical people, in chapter one we don’t get a sense of this event’s place in history. For the rest of the novel, we do get a real sense of the period—the hardships, indignities and boredom of prison life, the insecurity of people in times of war, the extremes that human beings are capable of surviving.

Tom Phillips, Mozote (2022)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60709550-mozote?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=YFVltjOHI3&rank=1

This ambitious political thriller with supernatural elements features the human dramas involved when liberation theology preached and practiced by the priests draws down repression from the government.
Father Gabriel Martin, Vatican exorcist, believes it was a galla, a Sumerian demon, that took his wife, the knowledge revealed to him during an exorcism. Also during an exorcism, a demon tells him he will meet Lucifer ‘in Mozote’.
Nicolas Carranza and Jose Garcia, senior officers in the Salvadoran Army, drive up the Cacahuatique volcano to a doorway to the interior. As a young man, Garcia had been down there and sold his soul to a creature called Neti. Once inside, they meet three Argentinians, who issue them a nefarious mission—kill Archbishop Oscar Romero. His work preaching against the government’s repression has drawn attention from the Army.
Alejandra Rivera de Hernandez is prosecutor in the case of Romero’s assassination. She is determined to prosecute all the decision-makers within the death squads, but she gets no help from the Police, as they are complicit. She uncovers a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top of the Army, even including collusion from the US Embassy.
A couple of US nuns face danger delivering food, medicine and supplies to the beleaguered poor. Ale’s son Jose speaks at night to the ghost of his dead sister. Her other son Max’s girlfriend Ana leads a guerrilla mission into the jungle.
In the real world, people are not motivated by demons and exorcisms and do not do evil deeds because they have sold their souls to the devil. Nevertheless, I thought the supernatural element an enticing addition to the story.
Despite the supernatural elements, and despite some misunderstandings about the history of Communism, the portrayal of El Salvador’s death squads is intelligent and believable. This is because a lot of the story is taken from historical events and real people, blending into that fictional characters. For this reason, the cast of characters is enormous, and the events are as complex as real-world events are. Historical backstory is accomplished by citing CIA memoranda, a clever device. In places the exposition is delivered in dialogue, which tends to make dialogue sound unnatural.
This is an excellent novel, and you will also learn a lot about the death squads in El Salvador. I loved the concept of mixing the real and the fictional and the juicy supernatural bits.

Maria McCann, As Meat Loves Salt (Harvest Books 2003)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/271487.As_Meat_Loves_Salt

Jacob Cullen and his brothers dredge the pond on a Royalist estate to discover the body of a man, Christopher Walshe, who had not even been missed. Jacob is to be married, but his behaviour on the wedding day is something he can’t live down and his bride Caro can’t forgive.
In disgrace, he joins with Christopher Ferris, recruited into the New Model Army as a pikeman. He learns pikemanship and competes with another soldier for Ferris’ attentions. He yearns to find out what happened to his brothers and his wife and hides from Ferris his secret shame.
After the devastating battle of Basing House, Ferris deserts, and, takes Jacob with him. They go to London and happily live with his aunt in Cheapside. Jacob suffers from ‘pangs’ of love for Ferris. They finally become lovers, and, though less enthusiastic than Ferris, Jacob follows him to found a colony of Diggers. He dreads the hard labour and privation, and worries that he’ll not find privacy with Ferris away from judgemental religious eyes.
Jacob is a big man, and his fierce love leads to behaviour perceived as ‘brutish’ by Ferris and the idealistic Diggers. Don’t expect a happy ending.
The portrayal of the hardships, the endless waiting around, the periodic terrifying battles, the cold, wet and filth of army life is extremely evocative. The battle scenes are exceptionally gory.
The tale is told in the first person, with exceptional attention to period-accurate language, resulting in a strong voice from the past. Yet, sometimes the language is so antique that the meaning is too oblique to modern eyes. It’s long and slow, as life probably was back then, but it’s worth the effort.

Shahida Rahman, An Ayah’s Choice (Onwe 2022)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60736093-an-ayah-s-choice

Turn-of-the-century aspiring artist Jaya Devani years for a life beyond the confines of her small Indian village of Khesar. Unloved by her beleaguered and widowed mother, Jaya’s only joy is her brother Krishnan and the beautiful forest to which she can escape to create her drawings.
A position as an ayah (nanny) in an English household offers the escape she craves. Colonel William Edmundson is often absent; Memsahib Sara is emotionally erratic and takes laudanum tea to sleep. Jaya falls into a clandestine relationship with William, in his study at night. When the family move to London, she has to choose whether to stay with them or remain in India and marry a friend of her brother’s.
Like many women, Jaya’s subservient position clashes with her independent spirit. If love were the only question, her situation would not be impossible. William’s choices are less than ethical, to say the least, but Jaya continues to buy his justifications. She sees that it is not just the master/servant relationship that causes injustice; she sees William treat his wife as ‘furniture’.
The realities of life outside the study catch up to them, and Jaya finds the realities of life outside the Edmundson house even harsher. In the end it is the support of women that rescues her, and Jaya uses her artistic skill to further the cause of women’s suffrage.
When Jaya falls into William’s arms, I found myself thinking, ‘you idiot’, yet don’t we all often take this path?
After exclusively following Jaya, suddenly Chapter 27 takes up her erstwhile fiancé Rafik’s point of view, and Chapter 28 turns to William’s. It kind of ruins things to see inside William’s head for a bit.
This tale of female empowerment is a well written peek into colonial oppression and women’s oppression across the two countries.
This review was written for Historical Novels Review.

David Mark, Anatomy of a Heretic (Head of Zeus 2022)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58367813-anatomy-of-a-heretic?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=b3p4bMAr6c&rank=1

London 1628. Gentleman assassin Nicolaes de Pelgrom aka Wiebbe Hayes is the devoted nephew of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, darling of King James. He is engaged by the widow Mariam Towerson to travel to the Indies to exact revenge for the murder of her husband.
On the same journey is apothecary Jeronimus Cornelisz, hired in Amsterdam to escort precious cargo. Cornelisz has just murdered someone with a poisoned letter and is rumoured to be under the influence of the Rosicrucian Torrentius.
Also aboard the Batavia is the beautiful Lucretia Jansz and her maid Zwaantie, who is under Cornelisz’s influence.
The commander of the ship is Francisco Pelsaert, constantly at odds with the skipper Ariaen Jacobsz. The mutinous mood of the crew and the enmity between the men in charge provide the perfect fodder for the nefarious schemes of Cornelisz.
As the two assassins clash, so do their respective missions. The ship is wrecked on the reefs of the Abrolhos Islands (now called Batavia’s Graveyard or Beacon Island), and the fateful voyage becomes the stuff of history, the dark, carnal, bloodthirsty details with which I won’t spoil you.
The author gives little for free, jumping straight into gorgeous and grotesque scenes with no backstory, which makes the first few chapters hard reading, but it’s worth it once you get going. The writing is sumptuous and decadent, including some truly inspired curse words—e.g., ‘shit-spangled daughters of flux-cunnied curs’.
I felt certain that an evil character like Cornelisz would not prove to be well rounded, but even he becomes briefly human in the face of cataclysm.
This lush masterpiece lives in the underbelly of a vibrant period when unscrupulous adventurers clawed for profit from the New World.
This review was written for Historical Novels Review.

A. S. Byatt, Possession (Vintage 1991)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41219.Possession?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=I6SN8nY1ey&rank=1

Roland Michell is a researcher investigating the work of (fictional) Victorian poet Randolph Ash. In a library he happens upon some correspondence from Ash to a lady, whom he believes to be the (fictional) poet Christabel LaMotte. The fictional poets are loosely based on Robert Browning and Christina Rossetti.
Roland pursues the subject from library to stately home, hoping to achieve an academic scoop before rival researcher Mortimer Cropper—who also pursues a literary-research relationship with Beatrice Nest—beats him to it. Roland collaborates with Maud Bailey, some relative of Christabel’s. The blossoming relationship between Roland and Maud parallels that of Ash and Christabel.
Christabel is described as ‘generic Victorian lady, specific shy poetess’. She wore ‘emerald green boots’ and had ‘a hint of greenness’ in her hair, drawing a poetic comparison to the fishy-serpent-fairy Melusina, about whom she wrote an epic poem. Her poetry had apparently been received differently by subsequent generations of feminists—‘swing skirted and lipsticked in the 50s, miniskirted and trailing Indian cotton in the 60s, black-lipped under pre-Raphaelite hairbrushes in the 70s’. There is much imagery of Nimue bewitching Merlin under the hawthorn, entrapped females, ladies sleeping enchanted in glass coffins, ladies enveloped by waves.
Roland and Maud discover that Ash’s and Christabel’s affair drove Christabel’s companion-maybe-lover Blanche Glover to suicide and resulted in a lovechild Ash never knew about.
This Booker winner is considered a work of ‘postmodern literature’, categorised as ‘historiographic metafiction’, combining historical fiction with metafiction (which continually reminds the audience to be aware they are reading a fictional work). As such it uses frequent allusions to other artistic, historical and literary texts. There are entire chapters consisting only of Ash’s and Christabel’s wordy, erudite correspondence and other entire chapters of poems or journal entries.
‘There’s a reference to almost everything in Randolph Ash, sooner or later’ is said about the fictional poet’s work, which I feel goes for Byatt’s work, too. This is–and I have been looking for one, after a slew of easy-read who-dunnits—a thoroughly grown-up book. It was very hard to get into; I’ve tried off and on to start reading it over a space of three years (and I confess, I skipped over the poems). In this quick-swipe, dumbed-down day and age, it’s hard to devote such a block of time as is required to read such a meaty work. We’ve got to keep trying, lest we forget how.